Paving to start once poles moved

Thursday

May 3, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 3, 2007 at 3:17 AM

Spring and Pond Street happenings — Early this week the MBTA’s contractor, CBB, approached us to say that they needed to close the Spring Street crossing at the skating pond for two days this week. Apparently, the tracks have not been set at the proper height and must be raised. If you were around when CBB originally adjusted the rail position, you may remember the gigantic machine that lifted the rails and tamped new ballast stone under the rails to adjust them. That machine was to have been available to CBB only for a limited time.

Spring and Pond Street happenings — Early this week the MBTA’s contractor, CBB, approached us to say that they needed to close the Spring Street crossing at the skating pond for two days this week. Apparently, the tracks have not been set at the proper height and must be raised. If you were around when CBB originally adjusted the rail position, you may remember the gigantic machine that lifted the rails and tamped new ballast stone under the rails to adjust them. That machine was to have been available to CBB only for a limited time.

However, as it turned out, after preliminary arrangements for closure had been made with the safety forces and the school buses, CBB found that the machine availability had a larger window and this work could wait until Pond Street reopens. So that’s why you may have seen alerting message boards at the skating pond this week but no activity.

Speaking about Pond Street, the work there continues and the site is nearly ready for final paving. One of the impediments to the final finishing of Pond Street is the presence of two utility poles that are now smack-dab in the street. Even though we became accustomed to a pole in the street at Itchy’s Corner in Scituate, we guess that’s not too cool here. As soon as the utility companies tend to these poles paving should get started.

Sohier Street —CBB continues to work like busy beavers at Sohier Street. We had some concerns about the width of the sidewalk being installed. But, all is well that ends well and they will be the required 4-1/2 foot minimum width.

Lower King Street —More CBB busy bees are doing lots of work here. The supports for a new traffic light at King St./N. Main St./Forest Ave. are being constructed. The accompanying photo shows a truck-mounted auger drilling a hole for the base that will support one of the new traffic lights to be installed. Shortly, the posts will be erected and the traffic lights installed. The current raised median on King Street at this intersection will be replaced by a painted median. This is so the large trucks removing material from the transfer station can navigate around the corner.

Granite edged medians will be installed at the railroad crossing as will be a sidewalk from N. Main Street to Laugelle Lane, including a new pedestrian crossing at the tracks. This sidewalk will connect with the new sidewalk, which will be constructed by the Town this fall to the Cohasset Station. The cost for this new sidewalk to the station will be paid for from our recently awarded Transportation Oriented Development grant. The new sidewalk construction project must be coordinated with several other projects along Route 3A. So the exact construction timing is not yet finalized.

Fence Design Change — For the past 2-1/2 years the towns of Cohasset and Hingham have expressed concern to the MBTA that the fencing that they intended to provide in the village area was not as robust nor as historically accurate as it needed to be. The MBTA had provided pictures of the fence they intended to install to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE). (The reason they went to the ACOE is that they are the responsible organization to assure the design and construction integrity of the Greenbush as it passes through our historic Towns.) However, the pictures were not of good quality, and there was no description of the fence construction. It turned out that the MBTA intended to provide a commercial grade of hollow tubular steel fence with plastic caps.

Well, at the insistence of the ACOE, the MBTA this week has agreed to instruct CBB to provide solid all-steel welded fence in our village area. We believe that this material will stand the test of time substantially better that a hollow steel fence and will be a bit more historically correct.

Tom Gruber, Special Assistant to the Town Manager for Greenbush Affairs, Email:

cgbaffairs@townofcohasset.org

Mark Brennan, Special Assistant to the Town Manager for Greenbush Engineering, Email: